


Five Times an Avenger Needed Stitches (And One Time Someone Else Did)

by SeaSpectre160



Series: Whumptober 2019 [10]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008), Thor (Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Gen, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Stitches, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23414944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeaSpectre160/pseuds/SeaSpectre160
Summary: WHUMPTOBER 2019 PROMPT #11: STITCHES“For the love of- I can seebone, Thor!”“You know, I distinctly recall tellin’ you to not do anything stupid ‘til I got back home.”“J.A.R.V.I.S., what the hell happened last night?”“If your head had been one more half-inch to the left, you’d have nerve damage.”
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, Loki & Thor (Marvel)
Series: Whumptober 2019 [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1502108
Comments: 1
Kudos: 25





	Five Times an Avenger Needed Stitches (And One Time Someone Else Did)

**Author's Note:**

> _Wow_ , this took forever. Obviously, October is long gone, but I’m still hoping to have Whumptober 2019 finished before Whumptober 2020. You’d think that with all the self-isolation going on, I’d get more stuff done.
> 
> This is only canon compliant up to the end of ‘Captain America: Winter Soldier’, and veers off from there, at least regarding Brock Rumlow.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own ‘The Avengers’ or any other Marvel properties.

_The First Time_

“Brother, what have you done to yourself now?”

Thor grinned up at his exasperated brother, who was wiping his knives clean of the blood staining them. Loki was always quick to clean up the evidence that he’d been in battle, something which had often earned him deriding remarks from others, who often accused him of either having avoided the battle like a coward or being bizarrely ashamed of having been victorious in battle. Thor, on the other hand, would come back to the palace spattered with the blood of his enemies.

Such as he was right now, although it wasn’t only the blood of his enemies. One warrior had gotten a good blow in with his axe, and now there was blood running down his leg – quite a lot of blood, actually. But Thor was still feeling the thrill of a glorious fight, and cared not a whit. “‘Tis nothing, Loki. Are there any more warriors to fight?”

“Any more-” Loki’s eyes fixed on his leg. “For the love of- I can see _bone_ , Thor!”

Thor looked down, and saw that Loki was right; there was white visible among the red blood.

Loki was now at his side, pulling him along. “Come on, Brother, you need to see a healer. I swear, without me, you could lose an arm and not even notice.”

* * *

_The Second Time_

“You know, I distinctly recall tellin’ you to not do anything stupid ‘til I got back home.”

Steve winced. He’d known Bucky long enough to know the difference between his actual casual tone and his pissed-off-and-just-pretending-to-be-casual tone. “It’s not like I was _planning_ to get knifed.”

“You had a plan? I didn’t notice.”

Yep, Bucky was pissed. And yet, only half of the tension in his body was from that anger. The rest was due entirely to the people around them. Steve remembered all too vividly how Bucky had looked when he found him in that lab in Azzano. Whatever that scientist had done to him, it had left his best friend with a deep aversion to anything resembling medical care. He’d never said it out loud, but Steve could see it in the way he always kept the doctors within his eyeline, and the way he tensed up whenever they brought any of their instruments near him.

And not just him. Bucky’s eyes were currently fixed on the medic’s hands as he stitched up the long gash running down Steve’s arm, his body ramrod straight and his own arms stiff by his side, like he was expecting to have to spring into action.

“Exactly _what_ possessed you to get into a knife fight with that guy, anyway?”

Steve shrugged with his free shoulder. “My shield was three stories down on the ground, and he was coming at me before I could reach for my gun.”

“Yet you had time to reach for a knife?”

Steve sighed. “Yeah, yeah, I get it, it wasn’t the smartest decision.”

This comment finally got Bucky to tear his eyes away from the doctor’s work to give Steve an incredulous look. He didn’t say anything out loud, but his expression practically screamed: _‘Ya **think**?!’_

* * *

_The Third Time_

“J.A.R.V.I.S., what the hell happened last night?”

“You were intoxicated and fell on your coffee table, sir.”

“Ass first?”

“Indeed, sir.”

“Is that why I feel like someone’s stabbing me there?”

“I believe that may have something to do with the shard of glass that appears to have pierced your left-”

“Goddamn it! Ow… Yeah, moving… not a good idea. Call Pepper, will you? Get her to bring a really discreet doctor up here.”

* * *

_The Fourth Time_

“Hold still!”

Clint batted Natasha’s hands away (an act that few were brave enough – or stupid enough – to commit) as they approached with the astringent-soaked cotton ball. “It’s not that bad,” he protested. However, the very act of protesting involved moving his lower face, which was a bad idea, because of the long gash running across his cheek from the corner of his mouth to the outside corner of his eye.

“You said that to me before,” Natasha commented dryly, “After Budapest. I distinctly recall that being _very_ bad.” She managed to grab Clint by the chin to hold his face still, and started cleaning up the wound.

“I can take care of this myself,” Clint muttered, trying to move his jaw as little as possible.

“You need stitches, _Debil_. If your head had been one more half-inch to the left, you’d have nerve damage. Luckily, it wasn’t. It probably won’t even scar.”

“Too bad. That would’ve looked really badass.”

* * *

_The Fifth Time_

Working in a cannery was dangerous. And in this country, it paid rather poorly. Not to mention that he barely spoke the language, and barely anyone spoke any English. But it was a job that would take Bruce in, with little to no questions about who he was, or where he came from. And he needed whatever cash he could scrape together when living on the run.

So, here he was, sweating his ass off at the assembly line, trying to keep up with workers who had been doing this for pretty much all their adult lives (or possibly longer). So, it was inevitable that eventually, in his haste, he would tear his finger open on a sharp metal edge.

Factory protocol dictated that he had to duck out of the line immediately, and he did so, taking the bloody can with him. When the onsite medic approached him, battered First Aid kit in hand, Bruce waved him off and insisted on stitching himself up. They had long since run out of latex gloves, and he didn’t want to run the risk of exposing anyone to his radioactive blood.

* * *

_And One Time Someone Else Did_

“I really didn’t expect him to go down _that_ easily,” Natasha commented blandly, sounding almost _bored_.

Steve sighed – not everyone would call that _easy_ – but by Avengers standards… yeah, it was easy.

Rumlow certainly wouldn’t have called anything in this situation ‘easy’. But no one was asking for his opinion, because nobody cared. Or maybe they did care, a bit, in the sense that, if at all possible, they would go out of their way to give him the exact _opposite_ of what he wanted. The HYDRA agent in question was lying in a puddle at their feet, barely conscious after the beatdown he’d received from fourth-sixths of the Avengers.

The other two sixths weren’t as put out over not getting their licks in, although that may be because they’d gotten to pretty much obliterate the massive compound hidden deep in the middle of the Canadian Badlands. Thor had just flown over to join them just as they finished beating Rumlow to a pulp, and from the sounds of things, the Hulk was still happily ‘Hulk Smash!’-ing on the other end of the compound.

Rumlow looked like hell, which was only a source of satisfaction for the five people standing over him. He had some fresh third-degree burns on his left arm from getting grazed by one of Iron Man’s repulsor blasts, two of Hawkeye’s arrows sticking out of him (one to the right shoulder, one to the thigh on the same side), an extra bend in his arm thanks to Captain America snapping it like a twig, and the double coup de grâce: a burn to the neck from Black Widow’s Bites, coupled by a deep slash across his chest from one of her many knives.

“That’s gonna need stitches,” Clint dryly observed.

“He’s gonna need a whole lot more than that,” Tony added, with more than a hint of satisfaction. More like a huge dollop of it.

No one disagreed with him, on any level.

**Author's Note:**

> Debil/дебил = Moron
> 
> If anyone’s curious, I’ll be finishing the other half of ‘No Such Thing as Overkill’ for Prompt #16. But no, I don’t know how long it’ll take. Prompts #12 and #13 will finish ‘Emily the Vampire Slayer’, #14 will be a ‘Young Justice’ fic, although it’s almost done, and #15 will be for ‘Arrow’. I will be updating ‘Two For the Price of One’ in between each prompt.


End file.
